Hello everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope advanced.
Hello everyone. So we're gonna continue with the class topic. Last time, I remember we left off with you saying that it's all changing because last time we focused on the traditional understanding of the three classes. First question is does it still survive today?
It still survives to a certain extent, especially in politics and any discussions about politics.
Oh, like when you hear Tories, when you think of Tories in terms of politics. And they're traditionally upper class, no?
Yes. So for example, the conservatives those are the people who are in power at the moment in the UK. They also known as Tories, Tories has a slightly negative meaning as they're seen as traditionally upper class.
Toffee nosed.
Toffee nosed yep, and also different from the rest of the population and they separate themselves from the rest of the population. They are more focused on money and business.
So they are more elitist.
Yes.
But another thing about the UK is that UK is so multicultural, especially in some of the places, like London is one of the most diverse places in the world. So does multi-culturalism also affect the class system?
Very much so. It's becoming less important now which class you belong to because of multi-culturalism. Because you've got these different cultures all coming into the UK and they don't fit in with that same system.
In a way they changed the rule book.
Almost yeah, if you look back in the past, owners traditionally aren't parts of the class system. When you have new cultures, new identities coming in, it doesn't quite fit.
So the British culture kind of constantly needs to incorporate these new cultures in.
Yeah, and a lot of times they can't do that, but that's not to say that class isn't dead. It's still very prevalent. You can still see it in lots of aspects of British life.
It's one of those things that people don't want to directly talk about it, but it is really everywhere isn't it?
It is and it's something that is so deep down in our psyche. So deep down in how we present ourselves, how we think that we sometimes don't even realize it's about class.
It's also how you identify yourself. One thing that I wanted to ask is last time you were saying upper class, when people talk about upper class, a lot of the expressions or the images are not necessarily positive. For example, you say toffs and toffee nosed which are quite negative. What about other classes like working class? How are they portrayed in like say media coverage?
To be perfectly honest, there has been a lot of negative coverage and this also comes down to the whole idea of what we consider the deserving poor and the undeserving poor.
The deserving and undeserving. So basically some people who live in poverty they should get more like help and resources. But others they just don't deserve it because for example, they're lazy, it's their own problem.
Yeah. And this is one issue that we've been seeing a lot in the media recently and a messages have been coming out is the idea of living on benefits.
Benefits. This is when you're low income, you have the sort of like the social benefit.
Yeah. So you have money from the state and there has been some kind of stereotype going around that people who live on benefits are lazy and they're wasting public money as well as the idea of a benefit cheat.
Benefit cheat. So there were actually cheat on the forms to get more benefit. But surely that's not the majority.
No, a lot of it comes from the media. It is mostly the media that present this image and they do it to sell more newspapers. So if someone is convicted of cheating the benefit system, they are also known as a scrounger.
Well I guess it's because things like scandals, they sell more newspaper, they go for the shock value. But to be honest based on my observation is not just the economic side like the benefit cheat, but when you look at TV you also have programs that are negatively portraying the working class based on their cultural preferences for example like chavs - people who have anti-social behaviors and then they just fit in with the middle class values.
So you mentioned the word chav. Chav is quite a new word and it's quite negative. A chav is somebody from a very low social status and they would wear lots of jewelry. They will wear fake designer brand.
Huge logos and all that.
Yeah. The stereotype is actually they mostly wear Burberry and Burberry sales actually get affected in the UK because it's now been associated with chavs.
But I guess this is more the media portrayal, it is never like one hundred percent true.
No, the same as hoodies. So a hoodie is a type of top that you wear with a hood. So we call them hoodies and they are associated with being from a very low social status but involved in crime.

So these are just really just negative stereotypes of the working class which has been perpetuated by media. So talking about this, last time we mentioned social mobility, moving up the rank essentially and that's still very low in the UK, isn't it?
Yeah it's not that uncommon to stay the same class in your entire life. So you're born working class, you remain working class.
And the wages haven't really been going up, for example for the working class.
No, before in the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties, it was the idea that you could become middle class. But now because of austerity, because of the recession, wages haven't been going up.
Housing prices stay high.
Very high.
So it's getting more and more difficult for the working class to get their foot on the property ladder.
Yeah. But this is also one of the reasons why they've come up with now seven social classes. In 2013, it was completed by the BBC. They did a survey on the seven new social classes.
I've read about that.
Simply because the traditional ideas no longer remain.
And there's just so much more complexity to the whole class topic. And this is based on cultural, economic and social capital. So let us take a look at these seven social classes in the 21 century. Okay. So the top one?
They are the wealthiest group in the UK with the most privileges. So they went to private schools, elite universities and they also enjoy culture activities such as listening classical music or going to the opera.
Yeah. So they're basically high on cultural, economic and social capital. And the second is what they call established middle class. So this is the most outgoing group and the second wealthiest. They work in traditional professions like law profession like lawyers or doctors and they socialize with a wide variety of people. They can take part in a wide variety of cultural activities. So they're also high in all three aspects - cultural, economic and social capital.
So this is the whole idea of the traditional middle class. But now because of technology you also have the technical middle class.
The technical middle class? These are the technical experts. Right?
Yeah. So they're the ones that prefer emerging cultures. So social media they mainly hang out among themselves. They come from middle class backgrounds but they are very much involved in new technology.
Science and Tech. So for example if they are, let's say a very senior, let's say computer programmer that then probably there will be more in the technical middle class. They earn a lot of money but they generally stay within their own group. And the next one number four is new affluent workers. Affluent means with money, financially comfortable, they are economically secure. They're not rich, they're very sociable they have lots of cultural interest, in terms of wealth they're more, they're closer to middle class but they are likely to come from working class backgrounds.
Yeah. So they're the ones that bridge the gap between the middle class and what we call the traditional working class. So this is a group that has the oldest average age. So they're probably in their fifties or sixties, they come from jobs such as lorry drivers or plumbers, electricians, but they're also likely to own their own home.
So essentially they have some sort of economic capital but quite low on social and cultural capital.
Yeah. But because they bought their houses very early, they do have a little bit higher economic capital.
And they usually just socialize among themselves. And number six, the sixth group is called emergent service workers and this is a new group. They're usually young people they have high social and cultural capital. They know people from all different walks of life and they enjoy a white range of cultural activities, but they are not very financially secure. So they are high in social and perhaps cultural capital but quite low on economic capital.
Yeah. So you compared to the traditional working class who are low in social and cultural capital but quite high in economic capital.
They're quite the opposite.
But then we come to the bottom and that is what we called the precariat.
Precariat, this is a made up word, is a mixture of two words precarious which means unstable and worried and all that and proletariat which means people with no assets. So precariat, this is the poorest, most deprived social group. The kind of what you were saying last time - the underclass.
Yeah. They don't have a broad range of cultural interests, they don't have much social capital and they don't have any economic capital. There's actually a statistic saying that more than eighty percent of people in this level, they rent their own homes. So they got, they don't really have that same level of security.
So after all these perhaps that you can have a clearer understanding of the social class, of the social groups, social economic groups in the UK because usually for people who don't really know the UK that much, they mainly get the idea of the country from TV shows and movies and perhaps more lives about the elite like Downton Abbey, like some of the period dramas.
Most of the TV shows are popular in China. I would say the only show at a very small selection, a very small cross section of British society. And that's the same for most people around the world. They only see that small part, but if you go to the UK and if you talk to British people, then you'll start to see there's so many different layers and the class system even though it's there to a certain extent, it is also constantly changing.
And interestingly I also read something else about that survey. It says that even though the elite and established middle class they only account for a small percentage of the society, but they are the ones who are most class conscious. More people from these two social groups, they took part in the survey.
This is only one survey but it can give you some degree of idea of what is happening in the UK and whether or not it's true or not, that we're not here to really judge. But this is something that many British people do think is true.
And also this is a great opportunity for us to look at ourselves and perhaps compare China and UK. So if you have any ideas that you want to share, you want to talk about, or you want to ask any questions relating to social classes, feel free to leave a comment.
So we can't wait to hear what you have to say. Please let us know. And any questions leave them in the comment section.
We'll see you next time. Bye.
Bye.

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